And I wrote this snippet in London last year - Johnny the Horny

I pencilled in this snippet, one evening last year in London. A clumsy supermarket-trolley lad had the eye for me. Everytime, I went to buy something, he would grab me for a hug and this always brought on public smiles. Naturally, I was miffed.

He kept telling me how he was going to Greece for the summer holidays. A wiser friend confided that he had passed the same story on for 5 years. He was a bit of a simpleton and he had a passion for women's behinds like no one I ever knew. In this way, he manouvered all kinds of fabulous u-turns for his trolleys. You felt that a caterpillar was forever crawling about the arcade.

If a pretty lady strolled on by, one eye would follow the noisy trolley line while another stayed focussed on somewhere forbidden, his round head swinging around to watch her fading footsteps.

One day, he crashed.

Sometime later, my imagination took flight and I made up fragments of a little tale about him.

by Susan Abraham

He was king of the trolleys, handsome, posh and all,
Don’t you tell him otherwise or he would cry and die from a fall.
He was king of the trolleys, from where he ruled on his throne,
Heaven-high and decked in statued stone and gold.
Leave him alone and he would turn to mossy mould,
On his throne from where he drove a clumsy trolley roll.

Johnny Alexander Solomon Ripper affectionately known to customers, patrons, colleagues and bosses alike, at the Fat-Wallet Supermarket on Gloucester Road, as Johnny the Dripper, handsome bachelor son of one Hector Bulldozer Ripper, notorious jailbird aged 62 and currently serving 25 years in Belmarsh prison for the murder of his beloved wife, the late Mrs. Sophia Loren-Catherine Ripper, (God Bless Her Shoplifting, Kidnapping Soul), his entire future and romantic destiny rested on the whims and fancies of the pipe man.

It all started and ended with the pipe man. Every bikini dream. Every internet girlfriend.

Every Greek bombshell. Every rump. Every bump. Every lump. Crumpets and strumpets. Trollops and tramps. The more the merrier was how Johnny the Dripper liked his women. Fat in all the right places. A shake-up on the booty. A couple of splashes up the boobies. Some spice on the liver. Flab floating like a river.

No problem. No problem at all. And if he played his cards well and married into a billionaire family, even a fleet of yachts like Onassis would be his. The pipe man had promised him all this.

The short, funny, fat little pipe man that is. The stocky chap as some of his more dignified acquaintances labelled him. The whacky chap, they whispered who talked with the pipe in his trap and who walked up the aracde with a swagger in his style while his dwarfed footsteps struggled to cover an inch for a mile.

He always turned up at the cafe in good time to promote his dodgy deals.

The sidewalk one of course just next to the supermarket and the one with the funny French name. And so, he turned up too, regular and on the dot. Like the way a woman gets her monthly. Regular and with a blot. And so the pipe man too indulged in a daily; Mondays to Fridays. Ten sharpish, mind. Not a minute more and not a minute less.

Still free from his shift, Johnny would be waiing for him. " We're close friends, m'dear....he buys me coffee, looks after me, we're going to Cyprus this June for a naughty bit of fun in the sun. "

What Johnny failed to add, was that the Cyprus holiday plans had mysteriously fallen through two years running and was now headed straight for a record third. Pack and unpack. Pack and unpack. Pack and oh dear, unpack again. That was the sad reality of Johnny’s summer romance. Now when you think about it, perhaps it would be best to call this story, I Know What You Didn’t Do Last Summer.

In the meantime, Johnny’s father, a drunk with a talent for yodelling on his lager had managed to murder Johnny’s mother. In cold blood too, with all the trimmings.

Screams, shouts, broken glass, a smashed window and a pillow flying dramatically out onto the streets from an ancient council flat. Strangulation marks on the neck and in the shape of the devil’s star as it was whispered in the docks. Mouth so wide open that a swarm of bees would gladly enter to build a hornet’s nest. Not that she wasn’t some kind of hornet honey-pie on the sly herself.

Rumour had been rife that Mrs. Sophia Loren Catherine Ripper, full-time alcoholic and part time human being was a practising cannibal who cooked Johnny his girlfriends for his supper. Now one would never really know. If Johnny had eaten any up, (and the thigh drumsticks were the best part of all) he wasn’t telling.

Did I forget to mention that Johnny had a twin, a brother affectionately called Barry the Groper. Again, it was rumoured that one little accident and they could have been Siamese twins. Barry’s mottos were of a more intimate nature.
Grip a lady on the side, grope her insides, oh so tight and...

Yes, I’m afraid they were very much alike too. Indeed, they were a to-do,
toodle-oo-n-what-have-you... .........
(sorry, still unfinished)


Drawing credits from Old-time Clip Art